Motion Picture Herald (May-Jun 1946)

giiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii^ COMPLETED MONOGRAM Jade Lady Jumpin' Joe PRC Ghost of Hidden Valley Secrets of a Sorority Girl REPUBLIC Santa Fe Sunset 20TH CENTURY -FOX Home Sweet Homicide Claudia and David UNITED ARTISTS Bachelor's Daughters (Stone) UNIVERSAL The Runaround WARNERS A Very Rich Man The Sentence Humoresque STARTED COLUMBIA His Face Was Their Fortune MGM Uncle Andy Hardy Mighty McGurk MONOGRAM Decoy (B&B Productions) REPUBLIC The Angel and the Outlaw UNITED ARTISTS Red House (Lesser) UNIVERSAL Michigan Kid Pirates of Monterey Oh Say Can You Sing WARNERS Deception SHOOTING COLUMBIA Rio Sing While You Dance Cowboy Blues Down to Earth Gallant Journey INDEPENDENT Curley (Roach) INTERNATIONAL Bella Donna MGM Women of My Own Tenth Avenue Angel My Brothers Who Talked to Horses Undercurrent MONOGRAM Roaring Range PARAMOUNT Fear in the Night (Pine-Thomas) Where There's Life Welcome Stranger Perils of Pauline Suddenly It's Spring PRC Missouri Hayride RKO RADIO Best Years of Our Lives (Goldwyn) It's a Wonderful Life (Liberty) Falcon's Adventure Honeymoon Sinbad the Sailor What Nancy Wanted Secret Life of Walter Mitty (Goldwyn) REPUBLIC G. I. War Brides Out California Way Plainsman and the Lady 20TH CENTURY -FOX Carnival in Costa Rica That's for Me My Darling Clementine Razor's Edge Forever Amber UNITED ARTISTS Abie's Irish Rose (Crosby) Little Iodine (Comet) Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber (Borgeaus Robinson) UNIVERSAL Cuban Pete Black Angel Ghost Steps Out WARNERS Life with Father Stallion Road Cloak and Dagger Cheyenne HORNBLOW CITES PRODUCER RESPONSIBILITY TO DECENCY by WILLIAM R. WEAVER Hollywood Editor The producer's attitude toward the Production Code should be identical with that of the doctor toward the Hippocratic Oath and the lawyer toward the Canon of Ethics, in the opinion of Arthur Hornblow, Jr., expressed across a luncheon table at the Savoy in Beverly Hills last week. With 19 Hollywood years under his belt, embracing production of a succession of pictures which includes the distinguished "Gaslight," Mr. Hornblow's is an opinion rooted in experience. He particularized, "It is a mistake to think of the Production Code Administration as a form of censorship, a sort of policeman patrolling a beat. We are responsible members of a responsible profession, and the Code is the articulate enunciation of the ethical standards we have set up for ourselves. To seek to subvert it is to cheapen and debase ourselves and our industry." He went on, "I have deep respect and regard for Joe Breen (Production Code Administrator) and for what he has done. Oh, he has given me plenty of trouble, on occasion, in the way of making me change scripts to make them conform, but I find there is a great satisfaction in sweating it through and getting the points made in the right way, instead of the easy way that is so often the wrong way." Penalizes Whole Industry It was a step from that point to the matter of what Producer Hornblow categorized as the "lurid realism" pictures which have been dealt official notice by various censor bodies in recent months. He said, "They do an immense amount of damage, and should not be made, regardless of the grosses they run up, for the flareback from their exhibition singes not only the individual producer but all pro ducers and all exhibitors, penalizing the whole industry for the bad taste and rash judgment of a single offender. Whether or not they underscore a story point that is morally correct, in the final analysis, they contain a lot of material that is offensive to a vast majority of the people who see them. They disregard utterly the family factor in the screen audience, and we must never be guilty of that greatest offense of all. "It is easy to make the things," he continued, "and also cheap. There's no great artistry required to photograph dirty linen. Any of us could make three or four of them a year, quite easily, but if all of us did so, we'd soon be screening them in empty theatres. Not even the type of audience that supports dirty stage shows would long support lurid pictures, because they aren't dirty enough to satisfy the filth-seeker, just as they aren't clean enough to satisfy the family audience. There is no proper place for them in our business." Wider Responsibilities With the reopening of foreign markets long closed to American films, producers are under necessity of assuming even wider responsibilities than during the war period, Producer Hornblow explains. With the sources of information long closed, he says, Hollywood has come to know less than previously the nature of entertainment requirements in areas where American films must meet hereafter a keener competition from domestically made product turned out under governmentally or otherwise improved conditions. Little is yet known of the changes in thinking and taste which have taken place in war ridden nations, and it must be presumed that their people have been made keenly sensitive by war experience. "We must respect these sensitivities," he said, "not only because we cannot otherwise succeed commercially, but because we are civilized people and that is the way civilized people proceed. It's a simple obligation of social existence. We scrutinize the pictures we get from abroad, both to learn from them and to guard against material offensive to our standards, culture and institutions. We must be as mindful of their obligation to scrutinize ours in the same spirit. The mechanism being worked out by the Motion Picture Association for carrying on globally the informational service performed hemispherically by the Motion Picture Society for the Americas must be universal in its coverage and thorough in operation if we are going to make pictures which correctly represent both ourselves and our world neighbors." Nor is information from abroad more necessary to successful production than information from these United States, observed Mr. Hornblow, who went on from there to speculate on the isolation of Hollywood and the lack of a channel through which the men who operate the theatres in the United States might steadily convey the information regarding audience demands, likes and dislikes, which they glean from their customers. "One exhibitor can be wrong," he said, "or ten or twenty, but if there were some means by which the voice of the whole exhibitor body could be expressed, it would be wonderfully helpful to producers and, of course, to exhibitors and public also." At this point Producer Hornblow's listener refrained from recommending, until now, that he make Motion Picture Herald's "What the Picture Did for Me" department an item of required reading. Utah Company Formed Utah Picture Productions has been formed in Salt Lake City to produce motion pictures of news, industry and educational events in the state. The company will make a special film on the 1947 centennial event to be held in Salt Lake City. Associated in the enterprise are Chester Y. Clawson, president; John R. Olson, photographer and sound man; Robert E. Runswick, color and photographic technician. MOTION PICTURE HERALD. MAY 4. 1946 39